In order to investigate the relationship among cognitive learning style, reading strategy and reading comprehension, the researcher employed one English reading comprehension test to evaluate the participants’ English proficiency and two questionnaires for data collection.
3.2.1 English reading comprehension test
Ten questions were selected from the GEPT intermediate level of English reading comprehension to test participants’ reading comprehension. The GEPT was an English proficiency assessment instrument, which was developed by Language Training and Teaching Center (LTTC) in Taipei. It included five distinctive levels: elementary, intermediate, high intermediate, advanced and superior. The present study used the simulated GEPT intermediate level of English reading comprehension section to evaluate the subjects’ English proficiency levels (i.e., high- and low-reading achievement). Based on the mean score (M=53.84) of reading comprehension test, the participants were divided into two groups: high proficiency and low proficiency. The students whose score of reading comprehension test were higher than 53.84 were grouped into high English proficiency. On the other hand, the students whose scores of reading comprehension test were lower than 53.84 were classified into the group of low English proficiency.
3.2.2 College students’ reading strategy use questionnaire
The classification of the reading strategy was based on the framework of Brown (2001), Chamot and O’Malley (1996), Oxford (1990), Smidt and Hegelheimer (2004), Tsai and Ernst
(2009) and Yang (2006), who divided the reading strategy into three types: cognitive strategy, metacognitive strategy, and social-affective strategy. The author selected the strategy items from the questionnaires used in the studies of Tsai and Ernst (2009) and Tsai, Wu, and Hsu (2009). Because of the limited English knowledge of the subjects in this study, the reading strategy questionnaire was translated into Chinese to reduce their difficulty with comprehending the items in the questionnaire.
To achieve the validity, the version of the reading strategy use questionnaire was first translated into Chinese, and then reviewed by the professor Tsai specialized in the field of English teaching. During the administration, the professor Tsai marked the unclear statements, words or phrases within the statements. The author collected the professors’ feedback and modified the unclear and confusing statements. After the first version, the questionnaire was administered in a pilot study to 70 students and the reliability coefficient of the overall reading strategy questionnaire reached 0.83, which was considered reliable for a survey. The reliability of the questionnaire was cautiously examined before the survey was executed in the classes.
During the process of conducting the survey in the classes, the Chinese version of the Reading Strategy Use Questionnaire was administered to the target college participants to eliminate confusions or misunderstandings on some of the items. The Reading Strategy Use Questionnaire included two parts: 5 items on student background information (i.e., names, student ID number, gender, age and department) and 30 items on English reading strategy use (see Appendix B). A five-point Likert scale of possible responses ranging from “strongly agree” (5 points) to “strongly disagree” (1 point) was used to indicate the participants’
varying degrees of agreement or disagreement with each statement of strategy use. These items were classified into three types of reading strategies: metacognitive (item 1 to 10),
3.2.3 College students’ cognitive learning style preference questionnaire
To measure learners’ cognitive learning style preferences, Felder and Soloman’s (2004) Index of Learning Styles was selected for this study because it has been widely used for college students to self-test their cognitive style preferences and cited by many researchers (Felder & Spurlin, 2005). The Index of Learning Style (ILS) instrument contained 44 questions to assess preferences on four dimensions which include active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal and sequential/global styles. Each category of the Index of Learning Style contained two opposite preferences. In the present study, the author reduced Felder and Soloman’s eight learning style types into six learning types: visual type, verbal type, active type, reflective type, sensing type and intuitive type and selected 30 items in each category respectively. Due to the limited English knowledge of the participants of this study, the questionnaire was translated into Chinese to reduce their difficulty with understanding the questionnaire.
To achieve the content validity, the version of the cognitive learning style preference questionnaire was first translated into Chinese, and then reviewed by the professor Tsai specialized in the field of English teaching. Through the professor Tsai’s checking, the professor Tsai selected the unclear sentences, words or phrases within the statements. The author followed the professor Tsai suggestions and modifies the obscure and confusing statements. The first version of the questionnaire was piloted to 70 participants and the reliability coefficient of the overall cognitive learning style preference questionnaire reached the level of 0.80.
The questionnaire included 30 statements within sixth cognitive learning style categories and each category had five statements based on Felder and Soloman’s cognitive style categories. The questionnaire contained two parts: 5 items on student background information (i.e., names, student ID number, gender, age and department) and 30 items on cognitive learning styles preference (see Appendix C). A five-point Likert scale of five
responses ranging from 1 for “strongly agree”, 2 for “disagree”, 3 for “no comments”, 4 for
“disagree” to 5 for “strongly disagree” was used to display the participants’ varying degrees of agreement or disagreement with each statement of learning styles. These items revealed six types of cognitive learning styles: visual preference (items 1 to 5), verbal preference (items 6 to 10), active preference (items 11 to 15), reflective preference (16 to 20), sensing preference (21 to 25) and intuitive preference (26 to 30).